


Every Sacrifice You Make

by Marked_by_moonlight



Series: Hamilton Reincarnate AU [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Memories, Polyamory, Songfic, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 03:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20382796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marked_by_moonlight/pseuds/Marked_by_moonlight
Summary: Eliza and Alex finally meet. It isn’t the happy ending (or beginning) that anyone wants.





	Every Sacrifice You Make

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t own Hamilton. Please don’t sue me.
> 
> (This work is the second in the series, please read No Ordinary People first).

After remembering, Eliza babysits to earn money. What’s watching a few children in the twenty first century compared to raising eight in the eighteenth?

The years pass in a blur of schoolwork and laughter. She graduates from high school and moves into an apartment with a fashion major who specializes in late 18th and 19th century fashion.

He puts up with the astonishing collection of tea cups and fine china that she has managed to amass.

They have tea every evening and she grows closer to Herc, with a nagging suspicion that he is her Hamilton’s Hercules. 

Six months into living with him, her father insists that she is to attend a gala for his Senatorial Campaign. The Press will be there and Eliza will not have her sisters as buffers. She feels dread pool in the pit of her stomach at the thought of being at another political event. 

The last one was a disaster, with one reporter leaving soaked in champagne and Angelica cooling her heels in prison.

The only reason things had gotten so out of hand, she thought, was because the poor reporter had dared ask about Angie’s love life. Eliza admired the restraint her elder sister had showed, seeing as how the reporter used particularly crude words to describe a woman’s love life and who she took to bed.

Scoffing mentally, she continued stitching the pale yellow daisies that lined the sleeves of Hercules’s final project.

He was making the dress she had worn when she married Alexander. Eliza helped out when she could, but between schoolwork and trying to record her memories, she barely had enough time to model it, let alone be fitted for it.

Fashion was a difficult pursuit, she often told Hercules so. These days, few things were as fickle as the fashion industry. There was hardly any reliability in making such a career.

But Herc could not be persuaded otherwise.

\----

The gala was in a week, and Eliza still had no idea of what to wear. The usual color scheme of powder blues and soft robins egg accents seemed a probable scenario.

Herc had that gods be damned musical blasting from his room. Strains of piano and violin floated through the thin plaster walls.

She had listened to the musical about her husband exactly once. It was a very well put together piece, but it brought back too many memories. Hercules wanted to get tickets for spring break, but she’d refused. He hadn’t brought up the subject again.

\-----

She eventually found a dress in a second hand store beside a coffee shop Peggy frequented. It was gauzy and sleeveless, flowing around her calves like water. Hercules had finished the dress, so he had time to help her make alterations and add adornments. 

Her shoes were flashy, short, black heels. A black leather handbag finished the look. 

Eliza felt thankful that she didn’t have to wear a powdered wig to another political function ever again. 

She half jogged down the stairs and swept out onto the streets of New York, ready to greet the world.

A limousine was pulled into the parking spot beside the street that ran parallel to their apartment. Her father stepped out onto the pavement and opened the back passenger side door.

“You look lovely, my Elizabeth.” Said her father, he pressed a kiss to her hairline and Eliza fought the urge to cry.

Her father was graying already, and was barely in his forties. After living to the age of 97, Eliza knew how fast old age could creep up on you once that hallmark moment had passed.

The ride to the music hall was a short one. The old stone steps leading up to the alcove were slick with rain water. The stars twinkled brightly above her head, the moonlight struggled to filter through the glaring city lights.

There was security at the door, men in crisp white tuxedos, looking for all the world like they had stepped out of a 1920’s drama.

Her father smiled at them in greeting and led her in the Hall. The high stone ceiling glittered with light cascading down from the chandeliers. There were already several people here, most of them politicians and reincarnates. Her own identity was a secret, but her father’s was not.

It drew criticism from the conservative side of the nation. Eliza could kick Thomas Jefferson in the shins for dividing up the country so. America was not broken, but it was frayed with tension like a rubber band. 

Eliza shook her head to focus herself, her curls fluttering as she did so.

“Is everything all right, darling?” asked her father, concern seeping into his features.

Eliza smiled lightly, “I’m fine, Father. Thank you for asking. Merely concerned about the Nation.”

Her father made a commiserating noise. It didn’t help that election year was coming up. Election years were the bane of Eliza’s existence. They caused her far too much anxiety. 

After being surrounded by lawyers and politicians her entire life, Eliza knew the waiting was the worst part. The weeks and months sitting on edge, waiting for the votes to tick in. The sheer anticipation of betting on whom the country would choose.

It made her husband’s eyes light up in excitement. He preened like a peacock around election time. Her Alexander also took great delight in needling his fellow co workers. 

It had given him enemies. She had agreed with Alex on many things, but he would not leave well enough alone. He bickered with so many people, and it had come back to haunt him in the end.

She’d had to voraciously defend his reputation after his death. Jefferson and the others had drug her husband’s name through the mud. Even after everything, it was her duty as his wife to defend him. He had shamed her in the most painful way possible. Had given their son the gun that ended his life. And yet, she had forgiven him. Not because she had felt beholden to him in some horrid approximation of inequality, but because they were equals. 

Alexander Hamilton had risen up to meet her in her grief. She had lost everything in just a few short years. Her son, Her sister, and then her husband. Until at last, Elizabeth Hamilton née Schuyler was the only one standing. 

She had clung onto the memories of her Alexander and the letters he had written her. He had loved her with his very being, down to the marrow of his soul. No matter the mistakes he had made, he had been there. 

The Lord only knew what would have happened to her had he done the unspeakable. She shuddered to even think of it. The day Alexander Hamilton divorced his wife and mother of his children would be a very, very cold day in hell.

Eliza leaned back in the seat and realized that she had missed half of her father’s speech. 

“Reincarnates are as much a part of this society as other minority groups! We face discrimination and scorn on every street corner. As both a reincarnate, and a Chinese Immaigrant, I feel doubly scorned. Certain people in the Capital think that I should be shot where I stand for merely existing!” Yelled her father.

The crowd of well dressed sponsors and soldiers cheered for him. 

“I’d like to thank you all-“ 

It happened so fast that Eliza was barely able to blink. A tall red headed man had stood from the back of the room, and fired a shot.

Her breath came in heaves as she ran over to the podium. The covered chair skidded to the floor behind her. People were screaming all around her, the bang of gunshots filling her ears. 

Her father lay stunned on the ground. His shirt was spattered with bright red flecks of blood. A brown haired, handsome man lay beside him. 

Her father surged up from the floor. “It’ll be alright son. You’ll be just fine.”

Blood pooled onto the marble tile from the soldier’s middle. Eliza’s eyes flicked up and she suddenly had trouble breathing.

The soldier only had eyes for her father. His body wracked as he coughed up blood.

The past and present melded together in her mind. The image of her Alexander juxtaposed over that of the stranger who saved her father’s life.

They had been shot in the same place, right between the two lower left ribs. There was nothing she could do. She felt helpless.

His pristine white teeth were stained pink with blood. It was a gruesome sight to behold.

Paramedics arrived just as the man lost consciousness. Eliza couldn’t get the sentence the man had spoken out of her head.

“Every sacrifice I make is for her, Sir. Eliza is the best of wives and best of women. I did not deserve her.”

The pieces clicked together in her head, and she couldn’t hold it in any longer. Eliza rushed over to the railing and emptied her stomach of its contents. 

Her husband was a reincarnate. He remembered. He had been shot. He was going to die.

Her shaking hands clutched at her knees. Eliza collapsed against the railing, sobs wracking her body. 

“Ma’am. You need to come with us. You’re in shock. Ma’am.” Said a paramedic.

She just shook her head. It was too much to contemplate. Her head swam with grief.


End file.
